Three things.
Ouija Board
I simply won't talk about this. But if you bring one of these damn things out in my presence I will beat you to death with it and shove the planchette up your dead ass.
Salem's Lot/Pet Semetary
I fell asleep while reading Salem's Lot. I was on the couch. Slept on my shoulder funny. My arm went to sleep and was dead. Rolled over and my dead arm flopped over. My hand landed on my throat. In my sleep I tried to shove it off. Dead arm flopped right back. Waking up, moved it again. Flopped back. Screamed like a nine-year old girl. Flipped off the couch, tried to crawl while screaming. Dead arm useless. Planted face in the floor.
Reading Pet Semetary and went to sleep. My idiot roommate came in late and drunk and didn't close the door all the way. Dead asleep and start having trouble breathing. Come half awake and there's this weight on my chest. Open my eyes and there's an enormous cat perched on my chest, its face pressed up against mine. We don't have a cat. I screamed like a nine-year old girl and threw the cat against the wall. Shitting, spitting and pissing commenced from the cat and perhaps from me. Roomate crashed into the room with a tennis racket and clubbed me. Still drunk, thought I was a murderer or something.
The Radio Station
First job in high school worked at a combination radio station and newspaper. Wrote for the paper and did on-air stuff for the radio. Older station, older equipment. Tower constantly screwing up and losing signal. Early one morning we are supposed to be on air. I'm helping, the regular DJ is running the show. Tower screwed up. Tries to fix it inside, but something's wrong with the box on the tower itself. Takes a screwdriver and goes outside. Tower is in a field next to the station. High grass. Wet with dew. We don't power the tower down, he's going to check some fuses or something. Gets the cover off the box, starts to poke around. Driver slips, jams into the box. There's like a kabillion volts, joules, watts, whatever running through that thing. Apparently there's no safety because it fries him. Literally. A smoking crispy cinder.
After he dies, weird shit starts to happen. I've always worked late at night. Think better. One night I'm there alone and I hear somebody across the hall in the studio. See the reflection in the glass of the booth. Go to see who it is? Nobody. Door locked.
Another time I leave about 2 a.m. and go to get drunk. When I leave, I pull the paper out of my typewriter (yeah, I'm that old). About 6, I'm hammered with some friends and one of them needs to shit. So we go to the paper office. I go in first, go to my desk. Paper is in my typewriter and half a page of random shit (not words) is typed on it. Nobody has been in the building since I left.
Other people have similar unexplained shit. Stuff disappears. Things are moved around. People see movement out of the corner of their eye and nobody's there. People see the reflection like I did but nobody's in the booth.
So me and three girls/women who work there are in the lobby comparing notes and talking about the weird shit. As we are talking about it a picture on the wall behind one of the girls starts to rock. Just a little at first. But as we stand there and stare with our mouths hanging open the damn thing picks up speed. It swings back and forth, back and forth until it's almost going sideways. Nothing else in the room is moving. There's no breeze, no wind. One of the girls starts to whimper like a puppy. My nuts are the size of raisins and trying their best to claw their way up into my lungs.
And then it stops. Stops. Not slows down and gradually settles back. Stops. One of the girls says she's freezing. Could be my mind playing tricks on me, but I remember being cold too.
I look at them, they look at me. We don't say anything. And even though I later share a bed with one of them for a few months, none of the four of us ever mention it to each other again. We pretend it didn't happen.
I also quit working at night and alone. If I went at night somebody went with me.
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